DARPA Robotics Challenge

Robot Description

Our mobile manipulation robot Momaro has been
specifically designed to the requirements of the DARPA Robotics
Challenge. It consists of an anthropomorphic upper body on a flexible
hybrid mobile base.

Its locomotion concept is based on four compliant legs
which end in pairs of directly driven, steerable wheels. This allows
for omnidirectional driving on rugged terrain and for adjusting the
height of the upper body. To overcome larger obstacles and to climb
stairs, individual legs are lifted and the robot makes steps.

The upper body consists of two adult-sized
anthropomorphic arms with seven degrees of freedom each. The robot
grippers have four individually controllable fingers with two joints
each. The robot upper body can be twisted relative to the base, to
extend the manipulation workspace.

Momaro is equipped with a sensor head consisting of a
continuously rotating 3D laser scanner, which produces a spherical
field-of-view, eight RGB-D cameras with an omnidirectional
field-of-view, three full HD color cameras for a panoramic operator
view, and a top-down wide angle camera. In addition, the robot
can sense joint positions and torques and is equipped with an inertial
measurement unit.

The operator station supports various 3D visualizations
of the robot in its environment, panoramic and top-down
video, and the interactive configuration of semi-autonomous
locomotion and manipulation skills.

Our team NimbRo
Rescue was the best ranked European team in
the
DARPA Robotics Challenge, comming in 4th in the overall
ranking. The robot Momaro and its operator crew solved
seven of the eight possible tasks in only 34 minutes. The challenge was
won by team KAIST from Korea, followed by team ihmc from Florida, and
team Tartan Rescue from Carnegie Mellon University.

Our robot
Momaro practiced the surprise task for the final run, which is to pull
a plug from one socket and to place it in another socket. It aso
practiced climbing the stairs. In the run, the robot drove the car
perfectly. The egres motion was stopped and the rules did not allow a
second attempt of egressing the car. After opening the door, Momaro
turned the valve and solved the surprise task. When traversing the
debris, oue robot got stuck which resulted in overheated actuators. It
was only partially possible to revieve the robot, which scored the
point for the devbris task by moving a heavi piece away with its
gripper and waving a good buy to the audience.

Our team NimbRo Rescue did very well at the first
competition day of the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals. The Momaro
robot solved seven of the eight tasks: driving the car, climbing out of
the car, opening the door, turning the valve, cutting a hole in a
drywall,traversing debris, and the surprise task, which was to operate
a big switch.
All this was done in only 34 minutes. Our team is currently second in
the ranking, next only to team Tartan Rescue of Carnegie Mellon
University. Tomorrow, all teams will have a second run. The better of
the two will determine the final ranking.

4.6.2015

Today,
our robot Momaro had a chance to practice the tasks in a realistic
rehearsal run. The test went well. We solved six out of eight possible
tasks: Driving the car, climbing out of the car, opening the door,
turning a valve, traversing debris, and finaly a surprise task: open a
cabinet door and pushing a button.

3.6.2015

DARPA gave us the opportunity to test their network, including
degradation of communication. Our robot Momaro practiced the Egress
task by climbing backwards out of the car.

2.6.2015

Our robot Momaro practiced the car task in the Garage
today. The robot was inspected and and safty procedures were clarified.
DARPA made official photos of our team and the Momaro robot.

1.6.2015

Our team NimbRo Rescue participates at the DARPA
Robotics Challenge at the Fairplex in Pomona, CA. We moved
into
our team garage to re-assemblde the Momaro robot and tio setup the
operator station.

Our team Nimbro Rescue participates at the DRC Testbed in
Charleston, South Carolina.
Here, DARPA provides four test arenas which are similar to the ones
that will be used in the finals.
We operated our robot Momaro in one of the arenas, recorded sensor
data, and tested the
provided communication infrastructure.

2.2.2015

Our team NimbRo Rescue submitted qualification material for
participation at the DARPA
Robotics Challenge (DRC) Finals, which will take place June
5-6, 2015 at the Fairplex, in Pomona, California, USA.

Team Details

Team NimbRo Rescue is based in the Autonomous Intelligent
Systems Group at the Computer Science Institute of University of Bonn,
Germany.

The University of Bonn is one of the leading public research
universities of Germany. Its Computer Science Institute has a long
tradition in robotics research, especially in the areas of mobile
robotics and SLAM. Since 2008, the Autonomous Intelligent Systems (AIS)
group conducts research in cognitive robotics and machine
learning.

The AIS group has extensive experience in real-time
perception, control, and system integration for complex robots,
including robots for semi-autonomous exploration and manipulation in
rough terrain, autonomous service robots capable of mobile manipulation
and intuitive human-robot interaction in complex environments, and
micro aerial vehicles for autonomous navigation in restricted 3D
environments. We developed advanced methods for laser-based and RGB-D
3D SLAM, semantic mapping, and planning for navigation and
manipulation, tool use, and robot teleoperation.

The AIS group has extensive experience in robot competitions
and challenges. Our team NimbRo participated with great success at the
international RoboCup competitions, winning a total of 13 tournaments,
including five consecutive years of the Humanoid TeenSize soccer league
and the three consecutive years of the @Home domestic service robot
league. We also developed a robot for mobile manipulation in
rough
terrain, which participated at the DLR SpaceBot Cup. Our teams NimbRo
Manipulation, NimbRo Logistics and NimbRo Copter are qualified for the
European Robotics Challenges.

Our team has the necessary expertise to
address the objectives of the DARPA Robotics Challenge.